Zionist political violence

Template:Totallydisputed This article is about hostile actions, or actions termed terrorist against Palestinians and British soldiers, by Jewish groups within the British Mandate of Palestine, and later, by Israelis.

These attacks were not all directly connected with the "mainstream" pre-Statehood Jewish leadership, who condemned these attacks publicly, and often extradited their members. Strong ties remained, though, between the formal Jewish leadership and its underground counterparts. See also: terrorism against Israel.

Pre-Statehood Jewish terrorism

In the 1930s and 1940s, two Jewish underground organizations, the Irgun Zvai Leumi and the Stern gang, were responsible for a number of terrorist acts:

• During the period 1937-1939, the Irgun conducted a campaign of marketplace bombings and other acts of violence that in total killed hundreds of Arabs.
• The King David Hotel bombing on July 26, 1946, killing 91.
• The bombing of the British Embassy in Rome, also in 1946.
• Assassinated British minister Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944.
• Assassinated the UN mediator Count Bernadotte in September, 1948 for his allegedly pro-Arabic conduct during the cease-fire negotiations.
• Are claimed to be responsible for the massacres of hundreds of Arab villagers and the forced exile of thousands. In particular, on April 9th, 1948 a military operation at Deir Yassin.
• In 1947, killed two British hostages, sergeants who had been taken prisoner and later killed in response to British refusal to cancel the death sentence of two Jewish activists in Akko prison. Also, killed several suspected collaborators with the Haganah and the British mandate government.
• Attacked British military airfields and railways several times in 1946.
• Destroyed bridges over the Jordan River.
• Dozens of massacres before and during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, see List of massacres committed during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war by both parties to the conflict.

Actions following the establishment of the State of Israel

Some of the acts listed below are generally not considered terrorism because the victims were not innocent civilians. Recent Israeli policies are especially controversial and are considered either a form of state terrorism or as legitimate self-defense against Palestinian terrorism depending on the observer's point of view.

• Qibya massacre, carried out among others by Unit 101 under the command of Ariel Sharon. It lead to the death of almost 70 civilians.
• Operation Suzannah (also known as the Lavon Affair), conducted in 1954. Conducted by an Israeli intelligence agency, it was an attempt to thwart Egypt's relations with the West by bombing selected Western targets in that country.
• Kfar Kassem massacre, carried out by the Israeli border police in 1956. Altogether 49 Israeli Arab civilians were killed, including 11 children.
• Qana Massacre in 1996 when the Qana refugee camp in Israeli occupied Southern Lebanon was shelled by the IDF killing over one hundred civilians
• A decades long campaign by Mossad to assassinate and kidnap political opponents of Israel and suspected militants overseas, including the 1986 kidnap of Mordechai Vanunu from Italy; a foiled 1997 poisioning of Hamas activists in Jordan that led to a prisoner exchange for the Mossad assassins for the release of the late Hamas spiritual leader Sheikh Ahmed Yassin;
• Numerous incidents during the al-Aqsa Intifada in which Israel has assassinated individuals involved in violence against Israeli civilians. These individuals were members of militant organizations, including Fatah, Hamas, and Islamic Jihad; and some were simultaneously employed by the Palestinian Authority security forces. Israel states that the assassination policy is their best alternative because demands to the Palestinian Authority to either arrest Palestinian militants or extradite them to Israel go unheeded (perhaps because of failure by the Palestinian Authority security apparatus destroyed by numerous Israeli attacks, and/or because the perception of collaboration with Israel could lead to a Palestinian civil war). Palestinians claim that the assassinations constitute state terrorism, especially in light of the many civilians killed as a result of this policy (see: collateral damage), and also because an attack on the Israeli political leadership would also be considered terrorism. Israel claims that all its killings were planned on the basis of a specific opportunities to kill the intended person when he was nearly isolated, or due to a specific security alert intended to prevent the deaths of Israeli civilians, and blames the Palestinian Authority for its failure to fulfill its obligations to end terrorism as required by the Oslo Accords.
• According to Amnesty International, a campaign of unlawful killing (2,500 Palestinian civilians killed, most of them unarmed), hostage taking and other false arrest, indiscriminate attack on civilians, and the destruction of Palestinian homes, businesses, orchards and groves.
• Operation Days of Penitence, an Israeli military operation in the northern Gaza Strip conducted between September 30, 2004 and October 15, 2004 that focused on the town of Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahia and Jabalia refugee camp, killing more than 130 Palestinians, including 87 militants 31 children.

See also

• Terrorism against Israel
• Palestinian terrorism
• New Historians

External links

• Honest Reporting
• Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America
• Israeli position: Israel and Lebanon
• Palestinian Position: Information from Palestine
• Palestinian negotiation team
• Israeli position: 1948 Arab-Israeli War
• Palestinian position: Israel and Lebanon
• American position: Human rights in Israel and the territories
• Israeli Left-wing human rights organization: Human rights in Israel and the territories
• Unofficial Irgun Website
• American Position: Irgun Zvai Le'umi
• American Position: Lohamei Herut Yisrael
• Israeli Attrocites - from the Hal Turner show
• Zionist Terrorism
• Israel according to Amnesty International